I was surprised to find that the FCL is completely bereft of support for client side FTP functionality. Bummer. I would have wanted an FTP class that did FTP, Passive FTP and SFTP. Given the very complete support for HTTP this omission was surprising.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that you can't measure a thing without changing it. What google does is measure the web.
This topic came up obliquely at the RTP bloggers lunch yesterday. The topic turned to the fact that Google loves bloggers, ranks us highly and that eventually they would tune their ranking parameters to put us bloggers back down further on the list where we belong.
Google rewards good web behaviour: changing, linking and being linked to. It rewards those sites with higher page ranks. Don't want to play nicely on the web, like NPR and their idiotic policy about linking to them or the NYTimes and their dearth of links in stories, and you will be punished with low rankings. Don't believe me? Then why does the NYTimes, with all their content and all their reporters only have a page rank of 8 while Mark Pilgrim has a page rank of 7 and Dave Winer a page rank of 8?
Since the blogger lunch I have mulled this idea of Google changing it's ranking system to de-rate bloggers. Should Google change to accomodate the web, or should the web change to accomodate Google? For example: right now bitworking.org has a much higher page rank than the web site of my employer. [Do not bother looking, I have never mentioned them, their industry or their location in this blog. Ever.] I do know that I could put together a website for them that is structured like a blog, with frequent entries of links to news items from their particular industry, and short notes attached about how the company relates to that news item, maybe publish some white papers and mix in some press releases all done regularly on the home page. They could very quickly rise to a higher page rank and become authoritative in their industry, at least as far as Google is concerned. Is this better than the current static brochure-ware website? Yes. Everybody including current customers, future customers, shareholders, employees, and the web in general would be that much richer for a site like that.
So no, Google shouldn't change. The web needs to change to accomodate Google. Link, link to, be authoratitive on a subject, keep current and offer information others want and need and you'll succeed in Google's eyes. Let page-rank stand as the carrot and the stick of good web behaviour.
Heard an interview with They Might Be Giants on NPR and followed it up with a visit to the NPR site. TMBG has released NO! a CD for kids. There are 3 songs in RealAudio format available off the NPR site, my favorite is "Bed, Bed, Bed". It is a song about going to bed, but is probably the last thing you should actually play for children before sending them to bed. Reilly, Austin and I listened to it before they went to bed tonight. We were singing, marching and stomping all around the house. Lynne was upstairs grading papers and thought that the washing machine had become unbalanced, only to find that it was her husband that was unbalanced.
We'll be buying the CD.
I can't recommend DVRs highly enough, so if you don't already have one, consider purchasing one in the next year. You'll thank me later.[The Shifted Librarian]I agree 100%. Our TiVo has changed TV for the whole family, with our 6 and 8 year old being completely TiVo literate, and our 2 year old is always confident that he can watch Blue's Clues (with Joe, not Steve) any time he wants. But I have also had a real difficult time explaining to people exactly why it is so great, you just gotta see it and use it to really grok it.